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RV Langseth: Fishing gear

The picture above is an example of a seismic air gun going off underwater and how it produces the sound wave that reflects off of geology well beneath the sea floor.

Today we calculated that with the area we have covered we would be able to go around the world twice. We have been constantly shooting and recording data. Almost immediately after I posted my last blog we had to pick up the gear again because there was an issue. We noticed that there was a shark bite on one of the cables but that was not the issue. The true issue was that one of the GeoEels was missing. After further investigation we believe that a shark grabbed it and ripped it off. During the process of bringing in the P-cable I was in charge of the spares reel, a 12ft diameter reel that holds all of the eel cables.

Besides that instance we have had a very relaxed time. The rest of the weekend and beginning of the week went well until today. Today around 4pm we lost communications and data with another eel. With the time constraints we are under the party chief decided that we would keep shooting without one of the eels. We believe that this is partially due to the fishing gear that was caught on our signal cable, bt we can not be sure until we bring the gear up. We also heard that this weekend is going got get rough and we may be picking everything up and heading to port but no one is sure yet. I will try and keep updating.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers DRL/ITEST 1312333 and DUE/ATE 1104310. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.